Thursday, November 30, 2006

In Praise of Automated Tests: A Built In Break

In the good old days of slow computers, slow compilers, and tens or hundreds of thousands of lines of code that had to be built before you could test, compiling provided a nice break in your work cycle:

"Why are you just sitting there? Get back to work." Programmer's automatic reply: "I'm compiling...."

Faster compilers, faster computers, and scripting languages all conspired to remove this perk of the business. Thankfully, automated testing has brought it back: